A brief summary from LinuxWorld

[Michael Shiloh]

Jeffrey Malone wrote:
> I was one of many volunteers that showed up to help out OpenMoko at 
> their two booths at LinuxWorld here in San Francisco over the past three 
> days.
> 
> Speaking from my "officially uninformed" status, I would say that the 
> entire event was a huge success.  Both booths always seemed crowded -- 
> attracting far more people than our neighbours.  A lot of people were 
> just learning about the phone, while many others were well aware of the 
> effort, and had been anxiously watching its progression towards a device 
> that could actually be used on a day to day basis.
> Despite the overall meagre display that the phones could manage, they 
> made quite a good impression amongst the attendees.  (Qtopia, 2007.2, 
> ASU/2008.08 and FSO were all shown in parallel)
> To the confusion of the booth staff, we somehow ended up with two Neo 
> Freerunners in Neo 1973 cases -- so those who see pictures from the 
> show, don't be fooled by the case, they were Freerunners.
> 
> The people interested in the phone seemed to cover all demographics one 
> would expect to find at LinuxWorld (a few I didn't expect to find), and 
> the far majority had a bit of enthusiasm once they realised just what a 
> open phone can do.  People from various news websites were often around, 
> and there are even some articles already up:
> http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&nolr=1&q=openmoko&btnG=Search 
> <http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&nolr=1&q=openmoko&btnG=Search>
> The PC Magazine one even shows my phone's IMEI (yay, hehe), and the GPS 
> hardware fix -- which was done before I recieved the phone.
> 
> I myself managed to meet quite a few interesting people, including 
> fellow local users trying to form a San Francisco users' group:
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Openmoko_Local_Groups:_San_Francisco
> 
> 
> With any luck, there will be quite a few new faces around to further 
> help with development, and bring the software platform up to par with 
> the feature-rich hardware platform.  It seemed to me that a lot of the 
> "right" people had their interest piqued, so let's just hope they have 
> $400 burning a whole in their pocket, and spare time to-boot.
> 
> Jeffrey Malone


Jeffrey,

Thanks for your great summary, and thanks for your help at the booth. 
You, and the other community volunteers, were a great asset. Not only 
did it give us the flexibility to have lengthy conversations with 
people, but we also made it clear how involved the community is.

Thanks again,
Michael